


A New and Fluffy Way to Say "I Love You".

by CatKing_Catkin



Category: Tiger & Bunny
Genre: Adoption, Caretaking, Cats, Developing Relationship, Domestic Fluff, Falling In Love, Fluff, Gen, Indirect Love Confessions, Introspection, M/M, Shippy Gen, Talking, Team Bonding, Tsunderes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-22
Updated: 2017-06-22
Packaged: 2018-11-17 11:44:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11274738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatKing_Catkin/pseuds/CatKing_Catkin
Summary: Written for the prompt "kotetsu and/or barnaby adopt a stay kitty?"-----“What are you even playing at, old man? Are you hoping to make it your mascot or something?”“Nope! I’m hoping to take her home with me.”“What?”Kotetsu could not be serious.Kotetsu was obviously, absolutely serious.





	A New and Fluffy Way to Say "I Love You".

It was John who found the cat. It was Kotetsu who decided to keep it.

John had sniffed out the cat on his early morning walk with Keith. They’d found it being chased out of a car’s wheel well, and nearly into the street. Fortunately, Keith had managed to dash after it, scoop it up, and hover himself and both animals up out of danger.

After that, so he wouldn’t be late for work, Keith had taken the cat with him. And that, Barnaby reflected, told you pretty much all you needed to know about Keith Goodman.

Right now, the cat was sleeping in a nest of jackets in a corner of the gym. After the initial fuss, almost everyone had more-or-less been able to get back to work. Some, like Karina or Nathan, would periodically swing by to fuss or coo over it. But even they hadn’t been rendered as useless with the cat in the vicinity as Kotetsu. It seemed as though every time Barnaby looked over, his partner was sitting in that corner with the stray, grinning like a lunatic and babbling like an infant.

Barnaby finally lost his patience and headed over to join his partner. “What are you even playing at, old man?” he asked, raising an eyebrow when Kotetsu glanced up at him. He saw that the other man had wrapped a jacket around his hand. “Are you hoping to make it your mascot or something?”

“Nope!” said Kotetsu. Barnaby couldn’t tell if he’d missed the joke. “I’m hoping to take her home with me.”

“What?”

Kotetsu could not be serious.

Kotetsu was obviously, absolutely serious.

“Why?” was the obvious followup question.

“Well, she can’t stay here forever, can she?”

“So we take her over to animal control!”

“No!” Kotetsu looked horrified at the very idea, actually shifting to put himself a little bit between Barnaby and the cat. “Are you nuts, Bunny? They have so many cats to keep track of already there! She’d get lost in some cage and get forgotten about!”

Barnaby opened his mouth to argue further…and then checked himself. This was obviously, inexplicably important to Kotetsu. A different sort of tact was required here. Occasionally, just occasionally, it paid to take the old man seriously.

He settled down into a sitting position on the floor next to his partner. The cat hissed. Kotetsu shushed it. “Listen, Kotetsu,” said Barnaby. “What if…she…has an owner? Animal control would have the resources to find them. Of course they wouldn’t just forget about her. The people who work there _want_ to help the animals there.”

“I guess,” Kotetsu admitted with a grudging shrug. “But I could find the owner. I have a website.”

Barnaby couldn’t help but snort, at that. “You have a computer science class’s ‘what not to do’ chapter.”

“Hey!”

“Why is this so important to you?” Barnaby nodded at the jacket around Kotetsu’s hand. “Looks to me like she doesn’t even like you that much.”

The other man smiled faintly, before nodding down at the cat. “Neither did you, when we first met.”

Barnaby wished he had something to say to that. But he didn’t. Kotetsu did have a point, there. He had a way with people. Maybe that could extend to a way with animals. Yet that still didn’t answer his fundamental question, so he asked it again. “But why is this so important to you? Why this cat?”

“Because…”

Kotetsu seemed to struggle to find the words. That was okay – Barnaby could be patient. He owed his partner that much, for how often Kotetsu had been patient for him. While he waited, he risked offering his hand for the cat to sniff. She swatted it away and hissed, ears laid back. She was a mangy looking creature with a tattered ear and a milky white eye and fur that might have been grey or just impossibly filthy. But for some reason, Kotetsu had decided they would be soulmates.

“I never had a pet before, you know,” Kotetsu finally said.

Of all the possible answers, Barnaby hadn’t expected that one. It was so _simple_. Yet it was also so unexpected, from his partner who seemed to have lived such a rich, full life in so many other ways. Barnaby had often envied him for that. And he’d never had a pet?

“Really?”

“Really. Not so much as a hamster. I mean, Mom was allergic to cats and ‘Masa was scared of dogs. And I guess I could have gotten something smaller, but…y’know, when I was a kid, my powers were still developing…”

“I know,” Barnaby said, sparing Kotetsu the need to finish. He didn’t think too many of his memories from when his own powers were developing were accurate. The ones he was sure of, however, left him feeling even now what a heavy burden it could be for a child to suddenly and sporadically develop the strength to flip a car.

“Yeah. And then even when I moved out there was the Academy, and Tomoe was focused on college, and we were both so busy that there was no point. By the time we really settled down Kaede was on the way, and we had our hands full with her. After that…”

Yet again, he didn’t finish. Yet again, he didn’t need to. Barnaby reached out to rest a hand on his back, and Kotetsu leaned against him for a moment. It was a quiet sort of moment, but it gave Kotetsu the strength to shake off the memories.

“Anyway. I mean, I know my schedule’s all over the place. Work keeps me busy. I kinda like it that way. But while I’m here, I just…I want something to come home to, y’know? Something besides phone calls. That’s why an old cat like this could be great for me. All she’d really need is for me to give her somewhere to be safe and enough to eat and maybe some of those stuffed mice. And maybe one day eventually she’d like me enough to sit next to me and purr and stuff.”

“Stranger things have happened.” Barnaby hoped the attempted encouragement showed in his voice. He’d never really thought of how lonely his partner might feel sometimes. He’d never imagined that someone like Kotetsu, who made friends so unfairly easy, could ever feel lonely. Today was apparently a day for strange discoveries, it seemed.

“I like taking care of people, Bunny. I always have.”

“Good. Because you’re actually not too shabby at it.”

Kotetsu brightened up visibly, and Barnaby could have patted himself on the back. He felt good. He felt better. The world made sense again. He hoped Kotetsu felt the same.

Being Barnaby, he decided to take just a little bit of control of the situation. Kotetsu rarely minded when he did so, these days. “Okay. Let’s meet up after our appearance today, and I’ll help you buy some supplies.”

Being Kotetsu, he tried to brush off the offered help. “Nah, you don’t have to do that, Bunny. Should be a pretty boring trip – there’s a store just a couple of blocks over from my apartment.”

“Even you can’t carry everything you’ll need just all on your own, old man. And besides, _someone_ is going to have to keep you buying enough to turn your entire apartment into a cat condo.”

Kotetsu looked about to protest…and then he glanced down at the cat, shrugged, and smiled. It was a tacit admission that Barnaby was right, if anything was. “Well, if you really want to come _that_ badly…”

“Don’t look so pleased with yourself.” Yet Barnaby was smiling, too, and didn’t bother to hide it. “Have you even thought of a name for her yet? Assuming you even get to keep her, of course.”

“W-Well…” Kotetsu inexplicably blushed, and looked away. “I _was_ thinking on it, and I think I might have settled on one just now. What do you think of ‘Aisuru’? That way she could be ‘Ai-chan’ for short.”

“That’s cute,” Barnaby agreed. “I like the sound of it.”

He looked up the meaning of the word on his phone later, as he waited for Kotetsu outside his apartment. If Kotetsu wondered why Barnaby was smiling a little more broadly as they walked together down the two blocks to the pet store, he didn’t ask.

He also didn’t pull his hand away when Barnaby reached out to take careful hold of it. So maybe that had been his partner’s goal all along.

Stranger things had happened.


End file.
